


Address

by herbailiwick



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-01
Updated: 2017-08-01
Packaged: 2018-12-09 20:52:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11676867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/herbailiwick/pseuds/herbailiwick
Summary: (Written Feb 18, 2015)She's fascinating.





	Address

Seven fascinated Garak the way Odo did. There were new things for her to experience all the time. Like Odo, too, she rarely tried to experience them. She liked her logic and efficiency, and her routine. She gave little away, until a crack appeared now and then and he could see all the beauty and the hope inside of her.

She found Garak fascinating too. For some reason, she seemed less inclined to ask questions about his life as a spy, though, and more inclined to ask about how he’d coped being an individual, cut off from the world he knew, all alone. It was almost offensive, but oddly refreshing. It was…nice. He was a person to her, and not a romantic hero or a repulsive villain.

She graciously accepted his offer to take her measurements and make her something to suit her beauty. And though he didn’t tend to do much hair styling, when she asked what he thought he could do with it, he threw himself into the task.

Her boyfriend tried to help Garak out when she seemed to get upset at Garak’s offer to give her the dress for free. 

"It is too generous," she insisted again. And she almost looked close to tears.

"My dear," Garak told her. "I’ve spent a great deal of my life weighing my options in a multitude of situations. You don’t have to take it, but I simply can’t charge you, not after the generosity you have shown me."

As he boxes up the dress, she still looks nervous, and if he didn’t know her crew and the way they all seem to treat her any better, he’d say it was the type of nervousness that comes from being unused to kindness without strings attached. 

They’ve both done things they’re not proud of. But he watches her stare at the box as she walks away and knows he’s at least proud of the dress and her interest in it. He hopes she’ll understand why she deserves such pretty things, hopes she’ll see that life has made her pay too steep a price for things for far too long.

"A parent’s folly is a child’s pain," he says to no one. But it is nothing, perhaps, to the pain of knowing you are a murderer, to knowing you have taken everything from others as part of a group of wicked sinners. The dress might help, though. Garak has experience in finding which things about life offer some peace and comfort in a world he doesn’t deserve to take part in, a world at odds with his past goals and his childhood pain.


End file.
